


baby, how blue can you get?

by voodoochild



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Alternate Canon, M/M, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-10
Updated: 2010-03-10
Packaged: 2017-10-07 21:06:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>House, Wilson, and the blues - constant companions, from when they first meet, through the infarction, three wives, and up to the present day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	baby, how blue can you get?

House hates his singing voice.

It's too _everything_. Too loud at times, too low in others. When he hasn't used it for a while, it's too raspy, too whiny - it cracks and scrapes and doesn't sound good with anything. It's a good blues voice, but everyone knows the music is what's most important about the blues. If you can't feel the blues through the bottleneck whine of B.B. King or the heavy thrum of John Lee Hooker, no pretty lyrics or sweet-voiced singers are going to pound them home.

House doesn't sing when there are people around - he only accompanies, playing counterpoint to everything that's going on. He'll complain when he's asked to play, but he'll do it anyway; it's nice to be good at something other than medicine.

The occasion doesn't matter. He'll let Cuddy wheedle a few songs out of him at benefits, but only late at night, when most everyone has gone home. He'll pick out an old Robert Johnson riff on his Les Paul while in the middle of a case, but only in his own office, and once or twice in Wilson's. He'll play air drums in the clinic on Brenda's folders, but he never reveals what he's playing.

Being a musician, House has found, provides solace in anonymity.

Singing is too revealing, too intimate. When you sing, you reveal parts of yourself through the melody, and the melody is made for listening. You can lose a drummer, a pianist, a guitarist very, very easily. The untrained ear will go right to the words, ignoring all accompaniment. Singers are stripped bare right when they open their mouth, down past skin and bone to their hearts, their souls.

House doesn't want anyone to see he's even got a heart, much less hold it up for the world to see. Easier, by far, to throw himself into the driving build of a Zeppelin drum solo. To strum out "People Are Strange" or "L.A. Woman" to match the buzzing in his head. To sharpen both his mind and fingers on Chopin's Nocturne in C#. Easier to disappear.

And to emerge again after the last chord dies, letting the silence (sometimes the applause, but mostly the silence) wash over him, cleaner than air.

~*~*~*~*~

Wilson has never been able to master an instrument.

It isn't as if Wilson's never tried - he's mentioned how he screeched out most of third and fourth grade on the violin, plowed through fifth and sixth on the clarinet, and finished up middle school on the trumpet. David - the brother that's "still in his life" - tried to teach him to play bass once, when he was fifteen, but Jimmy's fingers caught between the strings and the fretboard, and he needed six stitches in his left index finger. House would use this as ammunition except that Wilson's had to stitch him up after trying to play "Freebird" once while completely trashed. Not a pretty sight.

But if House is honest, Wilson's a pretty damn good singer. His voice is a smooth, polished tenor, and he's still got the clarity that his mother drilled into him.

Mama Wilson had been _chazzan_, a cantor, her high voice ringing out through the synagogue. She'd always held the hope that one of her boys might inherit her musical ability. Neither of her older sons had shown any talent for singing, but Jimmy had picked it up as easily as Sarah herself. Sarah had told House once that Jimmy had been a _chazzan_ as well when he was a teenager, after his bar mitzvah. After that, she said, he had started listening to everything he could get his hands on; pop, jazz, rock, blues, gospel . . . if there were lyrics, he wanted to learn them.

He's not surprised Wilson loves the words best. They're all Wilson has sometimes, and his job depends on finding the right ones. Can't very well leave a terminal patient with an "oops, it looks like there's nothing we can do. Sucks to be you, buddy", now can you?

All those words come sliding, slipping, stuttering out of him. Not something he's written himself, oh no, that would be too personal. Wilson strips the layers from other people, not himself. Words - how you say them, how you mean them - can change an entire piece of music.

They give you control, and Wilson likes control.

House wishes he had the patience to teach Wilson to play something. Just to see him give up that control, if only for four minutes and thirty seconds at a time.

~*~*~*~*~

They don't collaborate often. Sharing bottles of Heineken and various take-out containers is one thing. Consulting on a patient and fighting over treatments is another. And music is most definitely a different animal altogether.

They don't have King-and-Clapton-style jam sessions, with House accompanying Wilson on "Three O'Clock Blues" or "Cocaine". They don't laugh over House drunkenly trying to recreate Jimi's Woodstock performance of the Star-Spangled Banner, or celebrate Wilson finally transposing "You Could Drive a Person Crazy" into baritone over lunch. They don't sit down at the piano together as Wilson tries to learn chord progressions or correct House's breathing techniques.

Their collaboration is something uniquely their own - and as most things connected to them invariably do, it involves alcohol and sex.

The night of Wilson's first divorce, House came in after a midnight bike ride to find Wilson at the piano. His spare key was sitting on the end table, and judging by the bags, Wilson was crashing for a few weeks. Karen had done a number on Wilson, who'd broken out the Dylan sheets and was currently singing "Girl from the North Country".

Ouch. Could be worse - could be "Blowin' in the Wind".

House remembers watching Wilson's fingers press the keys gently and inexpertly. Remembers the rolling chords coming out too sharp, the notes jangling together, and Wilson's voice far too jagged. House slid onto the bench next to him, covering Wilson's hands to move them down a half-step. Picking up the pace to give Wilson the rhythm the song needed.

With House's hands guiding him, Wilson's playing was louder, smoother. And with Wilson's voice getting stronger, House's low counterpoint - _in the darkness of my night, in the brightness of my day_ \- didn't sound so out-of-place.

Playing alongside Wilson was easy; too familiar, too comfortable.

After the last chords faded, House found that bottle of Sauza Gold left by his last attempt at a relationship, and two limes. He'd moved over to the couch, kicking off his running shoes and waving Wilson over. They sat there, passing the tequila between them, until their eyes met over the bottle and Wilson's mouth quirked up in that tiny smile he got when House had something he wanted.

"Jesus, House . . . please."

Wilson didn't usually beg, but really, it had been a while. And House can't deny what that edge-of-desperate tone does to his cock.

House slid messily to the floor, unbuttoned Wilson's jeans, and begun jacking Wilson off, spreading the spilled tequila and lime juice all over his cock. House just had to laugh at him when Wilson complained about getting sticky and applied his mouth to the area in question, pulling off only to enthuse over the combination of Wilson, booze, and citrus. God, does he miss dropping to his knees in front of Wilson - misses it almost as much as runner's highs and hitting holes-in-one on the back nine.

He remembers how Wilson's hands, clenched into the beige leather, got progressively more white-knuckled as House continued to suck him off. He'd pulled his mouth away and switched back to his hand for a little bit - half to regain his breath, half to watch the way Wilson whined low in his throat and thrust his hips up restlessly. Wilson's just so fucking pretty when he's hot for it - muscles cording in his forearms, hips rolling, throat bared as his head falls back - and while House loves teasing him, he loves watching Wilson come more. Watched that night as those soft brown eyes that were fixed on his darkened, widened, as Wilson groaned inarticulately and came all over House's hand.

House realizes, much later, that there's always a price to pay for enjoying Wilson's begging. Specifically, one involving being thrown over the arm of the couch, stomach down, ass in the air, and Wilson's tongue rimming him until he can't remember his own name.

But God, is it worth it.

~*~*~*~

The next time was after the infarction, when House didn't think he'd touch an instrument ever again and Wilson was too scared to say much of anything to him. Talking had always been easy in their friendship, and now there was this almost-insurmountable wall called "chronic pain" between them. House was angry and Wilson was lost and Stacy had left because she didn't want to become either.

She took most of House's heart with her. She left all the furniture and the widescreen television they'd bought for the bedroom. She also left three bottles of Bordeaux, which he and Wilson finished off at some obscene hour after not-watching three basketball games in a row. Wilson was curled into the pillows beside him, breath coming out on a soft wheeze and blowing strands of hair out of his face. House didn't have the heart - or maybe he had just enough of one left - to wake him.

His guitar was next to the bed, where it had sat since he came home from the hospital, and he picked it up, hands curving around the familiar frame. He strummed a few chords, completely unsurprised when they turned into the descending opening riff to "White Room". His low growl is good for this song, more Clapton than Bruce, and his lips remember the words despite himself.

_I'll sleep in this place, where the sun never shines. Lie here with you, where the shadows run from themselves . . ._

Wilson's never had the appreciation of Clapton that House thinks he should have, but he waits for House to finish the solo before laying the guitar on the floor and holding tight to House's relentlessly shifting body. He can't stop shaking and hates it, gritting his teeth while Wilson tells him for the five-hundredth time that it's going to, eventually, be all right.

It wasn't supposed to hurt this much, House had shakingly breathed into Wilson's hair as they lay wrapped up in each other, in the bedroom that still smelled like Stacy's Chanel perfume. Wilson right leg wrapped around House's waist as he rocked gently against him, carefully, like a fruit that would bruise if Wilson touched him too hard. It was fragile, this thing between them, and House's whispering was broken by the cries torn from his throat as Wilson's fingers brushed the mass of scar tissue on his thigh. He had pulled Wilson's hand up, closing his lips around two fingers and sucked desperately.

Had tried to put a stopper in all the words that wanted to spill out and that had absolutely nothing to do with the man in his arms.

And then Wilson pulled his hand away, fingers leaving a sticky trail on House's cheek, and kissed him, a soft brush of lips that said all it needed to say. Wilson's mind-reading gets scary at times, and House learned early on not to question it. Something about tempting the wrath of the whatever.

So he focused on the slide of Wilson's skin against his - hot and slick and maddeningly slow. They worked each other with mouths and hands, shuddering out their climaxes in whispers instead of shouts. House had fallen asleep quickly, head pillowed on Wilson's chest, his arms winding around Wilson's middle completely of their own volition.

His leg woke him an hour later (the clockwork cycle of the leg pain and lack-of-sleep pain was still new), and so he kept as still as he could and tried different ways to keep his mind off it. Recalling old case files, cursing under his breath when he couldn't remember any of their names. Naming every Bob Marley song in chronological order, starting with _The Wailing Wailers_ album all the way through _Uprising_. He only got as far as _Catch a Fire_ and "Stop that Train". Trying to quote bits of Python - Wilson liked Holy Grail the best, but House preferred Life of Brian - and forgetting what came after the "favorite color" sketch.

His memory was getting shaky, and that scared the hell out of him even more than Stacy and the leg combined.

~*~*~*~

They've convinced themselves that sex only counts when it's about the music.

The kissing and mutual jerking-off they did in House's car after that U2 concert (the Joshua Tree tour, and Wilson still insists that _The Unforgettable Fire_ was a better album) doesn't count. It's still fresh in their minds, though, every time House's chronic insomnia prompts him to pick out "Where the Streets Have No Name" and Wilson hums "Bad" whenever he does his rounds in peds. You wouldn't think kids would respond well to songs about drug addiction, but apparently, it's effective. He's watched six-year-old neuroblastoma patients stop crying and lie there listening to Wilson's absentminded _"I'm wide awake, wide awake, and I'm not sleeping . . ."_.

He can relate, after all.

But it doesn't count. That was just half blowing off steam - because Bono's ass had looked fantastic in those leather pants - and half "we are so going to get caught". They could take risks like that, then, when Wilson wasn't married and House could run as far away from responsibility as he wanted. Neither does that time six years ago. Wilson had just married Bonnie, and Stacy was pretty much a permanent fixture in House's life.

They'd taken off for an early lunch hour, and House had convinced Wilson to make empanadas (because while Paco Taco was pretty good, they couldn't hold a candle to Wilson).

It was one of the very few times House willingly set foot in Wilson and Bonnie's house - he liked Bonnie, but her home was a very look-but-don't-touch kind of place. That should have extended to her husband, but House's inner six-year-old tended to regard that with a "finder's keepers!" response. He'd pounced on an unsuspecting Wilson and finger-fucked him right up against the counter.

He remembers most how Wilson's speech degenerated from the Paul Simon lyrics he'd been singing (_poor boys and pilgrims_, and he has to compliment Wilson's taste - it could have been "Bridge Over Troubled Water", and that would have been embarrassing) to a continuous "ohgodplease" and then finally into low, inarticulate keens.

House still likes his empanadas slightly cold.

~*~*~*~*~

The third time - which is nowhere near that number, by any stretch of the imagination - hits House by surprise. Fucking blindsides him, actually - after Tritter and rehab and Christmas (fucking _Christmas_), he wasn't expecting to ever touch Wilson again.

Sure, they put their friendship back together. Things got back to within relative parameters of normal. House started stealing Wilson's lunch again, and Wilson continued henpecking him to buy groceries or go for pizza with people other than him. Wilson stayed when the fellows left, and said "I told you so" when Foreman came back.

House could have gone without the guitar-napping - what kind of raving lunatic breaks the bridge off a _Les Paul_, for God's sake? - but it got him a new team and Cuddy's underwear, to boot.

One thing it didn't get him was James Wilson back in his bed, in any and all positions they could imagine. And since he'd always been rather proud of his vivid imagination, he was disappointed to miss out on the opportunity. Wilson wasn't distant, but he had made it clear that anything passing the boundaries of the just-friends label was out of the question.

Apparently, all he'd had to do was tell Wilson he loved him.

Okay, yes, it was under the influence of post-electrocution haziness and a ton of drugs, but he'd said it. It counted. And while Wilson had just shook his head in the hospital room, he'd ambushed House about a week later, right after "Sixth Sense" girl's spleen had started necrotizing. House had just sent the candidates off on a little late-night gravedigging expedition, and Wilson had locked the door, yanked the blinds mostly-closed, and dropped to his knees to give House what probably qualified as another near-death experience.

Afterward - once he'd regained the use of his lungs, vocal chords, and higher brain functions - he'd gone to ask Wilson what the hell that had been about. He'd barely gotten a breath when Wilson's voice cut him off.

"Two days, House." He sat back on his heels, looking up at House with a calculating stare that House knows, from a good deal of experience, could end really well for him, or really badly. "Solve your case. Annoy Cuddy. Play Survivor with your Fellows. And figure out what the hell you want this thing between us to be. Whatever you decide to do, I want to know in two days."

"What if I want it all?"

The words were out of his mouth before he could deny them, and oh shit, he really did just go and say that, didn't he?

Wilson smiled - that sneaky little "you've got it bad" grin that had won him the hearts and panties of various nurses, paramedics, and diagnosticians - and kissed him, slow and heated and too damned manipulative. He'd sauntered out - patients to check on, nurses to charm, yadda yadda yadda - and House had sat in his chair, pants open, for a good five minutes before he remembered that the blinds were still partway open.

God, Wilson makes him stupid sometimes.

Forty-eight hours had never been so fucking excruciating. He'd been completely distracted - who knew Big Love would actually have the set to sucker-punch him? - though really, mirror guy had zeroed in on his state of mind rather well. Wilson's in charge, indeed.

That night, House had gathered his things together and driven the bike home in a daze that was probably not a good state of mind to be in, on the road. He leaned into the curves, gunned the engine, played chicken with the bicyclists down the center divider like usual, but he suspected his brain was probably still in that two-days-ago puddle on his office floor.

It's probably some sort of cosmic joke that he's had "Roadhouse Blues" stuck in his head all day.

_Keep your eyes on the road and your hands up on the wheel, cause the future's uncertain and the end is always near . . ._

~*~*~*~

He pulls the bike up to the sidewalk, hooking it to the grating on his building like he always does. Unlocks his front door, throwing his backpack onto the couch and heading for the kitchen to pour himself a whiskey. His hand almost grabs for the Maker's Mark instinctively, but no, this isn't a drink-yourself-into-a-coma night. This is a I-need-a-drink-before-Wilson-shows-up night, so he pops the top off the Jamison's and pours himself a glass.

After he sits on the piano bench, setting his cane atop the magazine-and-newspaper-lined top of the piano, his fingers immediately settle into an old Howlin' Wolf song – heavy on the bass line, right hand sliding into what would usually be the harp part. Use the breaks in the verses to drain the glass a little more every time. Deep and simple and mindless, because he can't really think right now, not with Wilson about to walk in that door and –

And do what? Has he ever been able to predict what Wilson will do before? It's not like this has ever been easy. This has never resided in the same planet as "easy". It's not like once they'd figured out the possessiveness and jealousy and banter was a thin veneer between respectable sanity and "I want you, I've always wanted you, and fuck what anyone else thinks" they'd run out and bought matching towels or some shit.

How is this going to be any different?

"Haven't played that one in a while."

Dammit, Wilson. Sneaking up on the cripple while he's at a piano is not sportsmanlike.

He swallows, sets the glass back atop the piano. Doesn't look at Wilson. The chorus comes out harsher than he intends – he's stamped on the foot pedal with his bad leg, and it doesn't hurt so much as remind him that he doesn't have the control he used to – and ignores Wilson as he starts to half-hum, half-sing the lyrics.

_Who's been talking 'bout everything I do? . . . cause you, my baby, is the one I'd hate to lose . . ._

Wilson puts a hand on House's shoulder and listens as the notes die away. "What are you trying to tell me, House?"

Oh, come on, House thinks. Put the pieces together, Wilson. Follow the patterns. Howlin' Wolf plus Jamison's plus two days of enforced torture. And Wilson wonders why House shuts himself up, if this is what he gets for finally saying what Wilson wants to hear.

He doesn't look away from the pianotop in front of him. Old issues of JAMA. The empty cases to _Let it Bleed_ and _Me and Mister Johnson_ half-hidden under last week's Times and a mess of fortune cookies from Sun Xin's. Familiar stuff, unconnected to anything that may or may not be happening in James Wilson's brain behind him.

Which is when he feels Wilson's lips brush across the base of his neck and hears Wilson murmur in his ear.

"You're an idiot, you know that?"

Before he can smack Wilson upside the head and ask him how he'd come to that brilliant observation, Wilson's lips trail up to his ear, leaving little bites and slow, hot licks in his wake. House's voice catches in his throat as Wilson's hands stroke firm and sure down his arms to slide open the buttons to his shirt cuffs. He sits there, frozen, as Wilson hums some nameless tune and starts on the bottom button of his dress shirt, making his way up House's chest to finally push the shirt off his shoulders.

"You told me something a few days ago, you know. Said it like you meant it and everything. Except I know you too well - wanted to say something else instead, didn't you?"

"I didn't -" House stumbles over the words. Fuck. He doesn't stutter, he doesn't, except this is Wilson, and with Wilson, he does a lot of things that are impossible. "I don't want-"

Wilson's teeth close around the lobe of House's ear, digging in slow and sharp, and House can't stifle his choked gasp.

"You did. You still do." Wilson says into his ear. "So say it, House."

And Jesus, he can't think when Wilson's pressed tight to his back, nails digging into his biceps, teeth dragging over his ear. Not when Wilson's voice has spiraled down to a low, filthy rasp, targeting the part of House that wants nothing more than to break. To open his mouth and fucking plead with Wilson to do something, anything.

"Jimmy, please, just -"

"I'm not repeating myself."

It gets wrung out of him, like it or not. "I missed you. Missed us. Still do."

Wilson doesn't have to say anything in return. Not when he's tugging House upright, steadying him by wrapping both arms around him, kissing him almost too-gently for the mood he's in. He reaches for his cane and Wilson walks with him into the bedroom. He lowers himself to the bed, peeling off shoes, jeans, and tee-shirt in a daze as Wilson strips out of his suit.

This time, House asks for what he wants, and that mainly involves Wilson fucking him hard enough to bruise. This time, House asks for forgiveness, and Wilson obliges with every thrust of his hips and slow, sure stroke to House's dick. Because House is finally, finally figuring out that it's not the sex that counts toward how stupidly fast he keeps falling for James Wilson.

Is falling. Has fallen.

And when he wakes up the next morning, to the smell of pancake syrup and Wilson singing along with "Riding With the King", all he can do is pop two Vicodin, pull on his boxers, and join in when he reaches the living room.

_You can see it in his face, cause the blues never lie . . ._

**Author's Note:**

> * Songs are, in order: B.B. King - "How Blue Can You Get", Bob Dylan - "Girl from the North Country", Cream - "White Room", U2 - "Bad", Paul Simon - "Graceland", The Doors - "Roadhouse Blues", Howlin' Wolf - "Who's Been Talkin'", and B.B. King and Eric Clapton - "Riding with the King".


End file.
